In which Trotter pins English and lauds the Green man

Chris Trotter casts Budget author, Bill English as a leech, most graphically:

" Mr English must be cast as an Eighteenth Century quack, whose only answer to his patient’s declining health is to “bleed him, bleed him, bleed him and then bleed him some more”. The same leech-craft that is killing Europe, is being touted by Mr English and the Prime Minister as our own unfortunate country’s sovereign cure."

He then turns on a limelight beneath Russel Norman's feet, to illuminate the figure who may be the only one on the stage with any idea of whose line it is anyway:

" Only the Green’s Russel Norman shows the slightest sign of possessing the Nietzsche/Douglas spirit. He, unlike Mr Parker, will not bow down to the deficit idol. The Greens co-leader simply refuses to go on heaping sacrificial victims (beneficiaries, public servants, the sick, students) upon the corpse-strewn altar of “Returning the Government’s Books to Surplus by 2014/15”.

Given the chance, I believe Dr Norman would cast back the curtains and throw open the windows of New Zealand’s economic sick-room. With the highest expectations of his fellow New Zealanders’ recuperative powers, he shows them a vista of blue skies and green fields, and invites them to get out of bed."

Trotter on bashing Malcolm, Kelly et al.

"What he’d found out, lying there in the dirt while those fists and feet rained down on him, was that if you bucked certain things – the mean things – they didn’t just buck back. No, no, that wasn’t enough. They crushed you and kept crushing and the only way you escaped alive was through pure luck, nothing else. The mean things of this world had only one lesson – we are meaner than you’d ever imagine."

Chris Trotter sums up nicely, the recent gleeful atacks on the unions and their spokespeople as a result of the Warner/Hobbit,/Jackson/Key thumping of our dear wee nation.


Mean Things.

Trotter at his best

This piece from Chris Trotter on the sale (or not) of land to overseas buyers is a classic. He's couched it in Medieval style, with knights, Kings, fuedal lords and monks and he's hit the target, bull's-eye!

"And what about the mad monks of Treasury – and their even more ascetic brothers in the Business Roundtable? Having compelled us all to wear the hair-shirt of deregulation and the flesh-biting cilice of free trade, they are still urging our leaders to surrender what’s left of New Zealand’s patrimony to the Holy Church of Globalisation."

It's very good.

Cadmus teeth - FS&SB

Sowing discord: In Greek mythology Cadmus, the bringer of civilisation, slew the dragon that guarded the sacred spring of the war god, Ares. Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, bade Cadmus sow the dragon's teeth and up sprang the spartoi - an army of ferocious warriors. Painting by Maxfield Parrish

Chris Trotter @ Bowalley Road has, not only this marvelous Maxfield Parrish painting of Cadmus sowing discord, but a very good description of the state of affairs around the Foreshore & Sea Bed issue (re-named Takutai Moana - Marine & Coastal Area Bill).
He also has written, here, a very sobering description of the situation in Canterbury.